It's catching, like H1N1, only funner

How about a little vintage Valentine:

Christmas, 2005

Tuesday was Valentine's 4th Rescue Anniversary. I just realized that. Four years ago this past Tuesday, Michael and I were spending another afternoon at the Los Angeles Animal Shelter in Van Nuys. We had been fostering dogs from a local rescue group for about five months and we knew we were finally ready to adopt a dog of our own. We didn't want to adopt through a no-kill rescue because even though they are the rescues we support, we knew that those dogs were safe. A dog in a no-kill rescue is a saved dog. We wanted to go right to the source and find a city shelter dog close to the euth list*. Since all of our foster dogs had been large and cat-hungry, we wanted to find a dog small enough that if it tried to go after Toby or Amelia it would get it's little dog-butt kicked. We didn't care about the age, sex or breed.

We drove to the shelter on a cool Monday afternoon with the top down on the Mustang and Bing Crosby's White Christmas playing on the stereo while we held hands over paper cups of holiday coffee. We were in love and it was Christmas and we were adopting a puppy. Well, probably not a puppy, probably a fully grown dog, but still.

That afternoon we met lots of dogs who were sweet and terrified and each one broke my heart a thousand times. But I couldn't make a choice. They were all great dogs; how could I choose one and not the other? I fell hard for a ten-year-old blind three-legged chihuahua whom I wanted to name 'Scrappy', but Mike felt uncomfortable making a commitment to a dog that would clearly require medical care well beyond our budget. I couldn't argue with that. We went home that night with empty arms and heavy hearts.

The next day, December 8, 2005, we decided to try again, only this time we spent the drive to Van Nuys in silence. I was dreading the afternoon. I hated the cold corridors and full cages at the pound. I didn't want to have to wander from kennel to kennel listening to the terrified crying of hundreds of beautiful, discarded dogs. I didn't want to have to choose one and turn my back on the rest.

We hadn't been at the pound for very long when I found Mike squatting in front of a little, yellow, rat-like mutt. I had had enough. I buried my face in his shoulder.

"Let's go. I'm done here."

"What do you mean? We just got here." He looked surprised.

"I can't do this right now. This was a terrible idea. Let's just go home." I'd lost hope.

"Hold on. We can go if you want, but before we do, did you see this one?"

He was pointing at the little yellow dog, a scrawny thing with a terrible over-bite, big sagging nipples and a rat tail. She was stretched up against the chain-link, her paws hooked so that she looked like she was hanging on for dear life, but her tail wagged happily. There were eight other dogs in the kennel with her, every one cowering in the back corner.

"Can we just go? Please?" I turned to walk away.

"Wait, wait, wait. Let's just take her out and say hi."

I turned back to him. The little dog cocked her head to one shoulder. I took a step closer and knelt down. She was kind of cute. Kind of ugly, but kind of cute. One of her little cellmates crept up beside her, tail wagging, looking for some love. She whipped her head around, bared her buck teeth and snapped at the perceived intruder.

"Whoa. Did you see that? She's all, Keep away, Bitch! These are MY people!"

Mike grinned at me. "You want to take her out?"

I did.

That was how we met Valentine. All we know about her life before us is what we read on her kennel card: She'd been picked up off the street on October 26, 2005. No tags, no chip. No one had claimed her, no one had come looking for her. She was an unaltered female, one to two-years-old. In bold red ink the card warned, "To be handled with CAUTION."

She hasn't changed that much. She looks less like a buck-toothed rat and more like a dog, but I'd still recommend handling her with caution. Why we chose her over all those other dogs? We didn't. She chose us. If you've ever adopted a pet, you know exactly what I mean.

Please note the rat-tail.

But actually, I didn't even mean to tell you that story, this was supposed to be a post about Christmas but then I sat down to write and found that photo of Valentine and remembered what day it was** and I ended up writing this. The title of this post actually refers to the post I intended to write, only now it doesn't make any sense at all.

Anyway, my point is that there's been a lot going on lately and time is passing so quickly that I cannot even believe Christmas is in less than three weeks. It's not that I'm feeling grinchy or scroogey, I just don't feel like it's Christmas yet. It can't be. It was just summer YESTERDAY.

Only it wasn't. Yesterday it was freezing and I had to wear six layers of clothing under my heavy wool coat and I was cold anyway. Yes, I'm completely exaggerating, but it is in the low thirties and even though Mike, who was raised in Michigan, keeps telling me that it's not cold out, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley where it is currently seventy-five and beachy and I say that it is VERY COLD OUT.

So apparently Christmas is going to be here in a minute and I'm completely unprepared. But I am getting into the holiday spirit anyway, and even beginning to enjoy it, as you can see with my new holiday header.

Isn't that great, by the way? That would have been our Christmas card this year, but Mike was worried about offending people, so instead our Christmas card is completely benign and completely boring. My dream Christmas card would be all of us at Frosty-licious doing the nativity. Theo could be the baby Jesus, Mike would be Joseph, I'd be Mary, the cats would be the angels and Valentine would be pooping in the corner***. Wouldn't that be great?

This post is now so full of random segue's that if I don't sign out soon I'll start writing about the audition I have tomorrow for my favorite show ever and I wouldn't want to do that, so I'll say good night.

Coming up next: A post about why Christmas is like the Swine Flu!

*Euthanasia list

**We don't actually do anything in celebration of the pets adoption days, it's just nice to take note.

***In case you didn't know, in Catalonia, Spain, it is traditional for the nativity to have a little pooping man. His name is El Caganer and here is a blurb from Wikipedia if you don't believe me.

Spain

El caganer

In 2005, the city council of Barcelona, Spain commissioned a nativity scene which did not include the region's traditional nativity figure, elcaganer, a red-capped defecating character which is not a part of the nativity narrative but simply an expression of the irreverent scatological humour of southwestern Europe.^[51] The council claimed the character set a bad example as sanitation laws against public elimination had recently been passed.^[52] The council's decision was viewed as an attack on Catalonian tradition, and, following a campaign against it, el caganer was restored to the nativity scene in 2006. In addition to the traditional caganer, other characters have appeared assuming the caganerposition. In 2008, a "pooper" of Barack Obama was made available just days after his election as the President of the United States of America.^[53]